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Post Virtual Reality Sadness

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Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#141

Post by Ntrails »

abakker wrote: post #46
Afforess wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finishing "A Memory of Light" and the The Wheel of Time series left me in a funk that lasted a whole week. I sometimes regret finishing the series, I now know how it ends, so I can not go back and re-read the series for a 4th time.

Audiobook the whole thing! Re-reading is hard, but taking the slow path with audiobooks is great. Personally, I've had some of the best memories of the books while listening to them while hiking. Especially for fantasy books, walking/adventuring while listening is great fun.

Re-reading is anything but hard. It's like slipping back into my 17 year old self, complete with breaks to jump around like an idiot because I'm so hyped and I need to expend a bit of this pent up energy before getting back to the whole reading thing.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#142

Post by TeMPOraL »

Razengan wrote: post #47
careersuicide wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago I started reading "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan. I had somehow timed it so that the week I finished the thirteenth book "Towers of Midnight" the fourteenth book "A Memory of Light" came out. I blew through the first chunk of the book and then got to a chapter that was over a hundred pages long, maybe even longer, Google says it was over fifty thousand words. It was the last battle, the moment t…

> I'll probably re-read the books someday, but I know it won't be the same. That is how I felt about Planescape: Torment, widely regarded to have one of the best tales of all RPGs, and all other great stories in other mediums. It makes me wish there was some way to get selective voluntary amnesia, where you wipe all memories of the specific content of something, just keep the feeling that it's something you have to e…

I wish that too. In particular, I'd like to wipe Mass Effect trilogy from my memories, at least temporarily. It had huge emotional impact on me, and I would love to relive it all again - unfortunately, I still pretty much remember the entire plot after the years (and though ME has some interesting degree of non-linearity based on your in-game decision, there's still too much of the plot that's constant to really enjoy a replay without a memory wipe).

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#143

Post by TeMPOraL »

harryf wrote: post #85
Kurimo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This whole phenomenon was reported on widely after "Avatar" came out. News anchors gleefully reporting that people left the theater feeling depressed their world wasn't as fantastic as Avatar. More of "the kids aren't alright!" reporting they love to do to scare parents and elderly folks. My solution: Move out of the big cities. I live in a small town in the countryside and my world is that fantastic.

> More of "the kids aren't alright!" reporting they love to do to scare parents and elderly folks. Sadly this is one of those topics, like violence in video games, where we don't get beyond this cycle of "accuse and deny". Which is a shame because IMO there are really important topics here we need to address collectively such as how this connects to addiction http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html The "data point"…

> The experiment you can try with most kids is give them a smartphone or iPad for 1-2 hours then take it away again with minimal warning but without using force. Once you've recovered the device, the next 15-30 minutes will typically involve aggressive behaviour; shouting, physical aggression towards siblings, demands to have the device back and something not unlike Gollum desiring his Precious.

Try the same with a book they show interest in, and you'll get the same behaviour. But nobody does that with a book because it's ridiculous, right? But so it is ridiculous to do that with an iPad or a personal computer! I'd say it's a pretty normal reaction of someone who was concentrated and fully engaged in an action, only to be unexpectedly and forcibly interrupred.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#144

Post by pYQAJ6Zm »

dahdum wrote: post #59

Having spent many hours in VR (Vive Room Scale) at a stretch, the article rings true to me. The biggest surprise being that it might not feel perfectly real at the time, but the memory is much closer. The next generation of pixel density will make a huge difference IMO. I can comfortably work in VR with multiple desktops, but the resolution is tad too low.

>I can comfortably work in VR with multiple desktops, but the resolution is tad too low.

I am interested in this. Can you, say, write code or read text for long hours, without having to upsize the text too much?

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#145

Post by inimino »

lomnakkus wrote: post #66
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It could also allow us to increasingly choose to build fully artificial realities. Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detai…

> [...] predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. This bit is seems little bit strange to me in that it's actually not necessary at all[1]... a simulation runs on its "own timescale", i.e. it doesn't actually matter how fast/slowly the simulator runs -- the simulation still experiences time advancing at the proverb…

The argument is that you are likely to be in a simulation, because most minds will be simulated minds. The precondition of most minds being simulated is massive computing power. If we can run a simulation but it requires half the world's computational resources and simulates one second per century of real time, then obviously most minds (and most moments of lived experience) would not be simulated.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#146

Post by TeMPOraL »

greggman wrote: post #55
nugget wrote: post #18

People talk a lot about futuristic sex robots but what about VR experiences that are not only physical but deeply emotional - wherein you experience seduction and actually fall in love? Think about riding in a weeks long 18 hour a day RPG crusade with a Milla Jovovich lookalike Joan of Arc who, in between battles, is irreparably infatuated with you. The tech needed to achieve this level of total immersion may yet be…

Putting 3d models of people in VR is easy. Getting them to do anything interesting and not just be a few scripted things is much harder and very far from a solved problem. Maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe all you need is the character to look you in the eyes. But I suspect most people would need more. Someone you can actually talk to. Not just pick multiple choice responses

It depends on the degree, I guess. Maybe you don't need to have the character directly interact with you (the player), but just with your character? I developed a feelings of affection to video game characters once or twice in my life, and that was just thanks to good scripted dialogues and long, engaging storyline.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#147

Post by relyio »

tajen wrote: post #122
relyio wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt the same way the day I went to check the results of the french baccalaureate at my high-school. A warm summer day surrounded with friends, acquaintances, and other people I went to school with every day for years. There was joy, sadness sometimes and an overwhelming feeling of excitement about what the future holds. We were laughing together, drinking already, lots of discussions. Everyone was here. I remember…

It's incredible that we haven't found a way to reproduce the social warmth of a school class. After that period where you're constantly surrounded with a group of 30+ potential friends with a 1-year cycle, everyone goes their way and never socializes that much again. They may build families, assume CEO positions or head for humanitarian causes, I personally flatshared for 14 years after high school, but we tend to su…

Thank you for the kind words! For what it's worth, I have considered joining my country's reserve army. It's only a few weeks of commitment per year (and a couple months of basic training). Friends of mine have already joined, they almost unanimously enjoy it a lot. You get to meet people from all walks of life that often share little else than the desire to serve. That aspect has also been of the major reasons re-instituting mandatory military draft for a few months to a year is highly popular in France. Conscription has been said to tear down social barriers between classes and reinforce a common sense of civic duty. Whether this is true or not, I don't know. That's an old idea that has massive support in the french society.

And even those who dislike the idea of having a trained conscript army in addition to regular troops have their own version of conscription. The overall tone is the same, only the military context is replaced with community work.

Either way, it is hard to imagine the shape and form of such organization because of the sheer scale at which it has to operate to be even remotely efficient. I agree with what you said about college. You meet people, lots of people, and in fact lots of similar people. There is relatively little space for the kind of variance you see in high-school when the members of the community are filtered by their performance on a standardized test anyway.-

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#148

Post by Kiro »

I know this is supposed to describe a problem but for me it has the opposite effect. I _want_ VR to be so immersive that the real world feels dull so I'm very stoked to give VR a go after reading this.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#149

Post by relyio »

mistermann wrote: post #113
relyio wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt the same way the day I went to check the results of the french baccalaureate at my high-school. A warm summer day surrounded with friends, acquaintances, and other people I went to school with every day for years. There was joy, sadness sometimes and an overwhelming feeling of excitement about what the future holds. We were laughing together, drinking already, lots of discussions. Everyone was here. I remember…

Have you ever considered being a writer? That was quite lovely.

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it! It was a good way to relief homesickness a little bit. I'm trying hard to get a better grasp of English, so your compliment means a lot. Thanks again. :-)

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#150

Post by jamesrcole »

jonstokes wrote: post #39

The few times I've tried VR I've had post-VR sadness, but mine was sadness because it totally failed to live up to the hype. I could see the pixels, for one, so I never forgot I was in VR. And the other thing is, as "magical" as those experiences are, they just don't measure up to real life. I've played virtual instruments and games and visited a VR villa and so on, but none of it was as magical as watching my kids d…

Also remember that it's very early days for VR. What we'll be capable of doing in VR 20 years from now will likely be very different.
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